3 Responses

But cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

I don’t think we’re at peak car. Once the younger generation can finally get a job and move out of their parent’s houses, they’ll buy cars as symbols of their freedom.

But the Depression (and the lack of cheap cars — thanks, Cash for Clunkers) holds them in place right now. They pretend that they don’t care, and that they’re adjusting, but they’ll jump at their chance for a car when they get it.